Apple's new CEO says AI will show up in its products, but only where it makes something better, not as a selling point. Here is what that means for your iPhone.
Apple's new CEO, John Ternus, says the company will use AI in its products but will not add it just to say it has AI. He made the comments in an interview with Wired's Steven Levy, answering critics who say Apple has fallen behind.
Ternus has been CEO since the start of September, after years as an Apple executive. He admitted that "everyone has an opinion" on Apple's place in AI, then added, "I really like where we're at." He said Apple is "absolutely going to leverage AI," but "we don't want to ship AI for AI's sake."
His point is that people should not have to wonder whether AI or ordinary software made something work. What matters, he said, is whether Apple built something people love.
Levy also asked about AI agents, which are tools that could do tasks for you and might make apps unnecessary. Ternus said that could make life easy, but that creating products is "a deeply human and personal thing" Apple loves to do.
The criticism has a basis. Apple delayed a more powerful version of Siri for a long time. It finally launched this summer.
The interview does not say which new features will use AI or when they will arrive. It also does not say how Apple plans to handle agents. For now, the message is that AI will be built into things you already use, not offered as a separate tool you must learn.
Expect Apple's AI to arrive quietly inside features you already use, and judge it by whether those features get better.
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